Daughters
by LAXgirl
Summary: Companion piece to the "Masters of Their Fate" trilogy. 3 part mini-fic written in honor of Father's Day focusing on Dinobot and her father, Stahlhand, from infancy to adulthood.
1. Chapter 1

This is to be a three-part short fic chronicling Dinobot and her father, Stahlhand, throughout the years as she grows up in honor of Father's Day this coming Sunday. It's kind of a sequel to "A Father's Pride," but can stand alone in the "Masters of Their Fate" universe.

Disclaimer: All Beast Wars characters except Stahlhand and Tripwire do not belong to me and are only being used on loan for the fulfillment of my neurotic writing habit. Don't sue me. Seriously.

**Part One: Infancy**

Stahlhand trudged down the corridor of his apartment tower, his footsteps heavy and slow. His entire body felt weighted to the floor he was so tired. It had been a long day. Despite the recent energon shortages plaguing the Predacon districts, Stahlhand's infantry unit was still expected to drill and train as they normally would. His unit - one of the luckier ones - usually managed to receive regular ration shipments from Central Command, but it was never enough to properly fuel everyone. Many of his men were so low on energon they couldn't even properly raise their weapons, let alone execute full practice drills. What rations they did receive would have barely been enough to sustain a desk-mech for a single solar cycle.

The energon shortage was steadily becoming a full fledged crisis. Many in the civilian sector were already teetering on the brink of starvation. Riots had begun to break out in some of the larger cities. As a commander in the Predacon army, Stahlhand received a larger ration of energon than the foot soldiers he commanded. But unlike many of his soldiers he had a family to divide that ration between, resulting in even less for him; his sparkmate, Tripwire; and his daughter apiece.

Stahlhand ran a weary hand over his optics. Under normal circumstances he would never allow himself to show such weakness. But here, in the empty corridor of his apartment tower with no one else around to see, the battle tank let his exhaustion and growing desperation seep past his stoic mask onto his facial plates. It was getting so hard to keep up a strong facade. His family was slowly starving and there was nothing he could think of to make it better. He'd never felt so helpless before. Many nights he would come home to the sounds of his small daughter, Dynamite, plaintively chirping for energon they didn't have. The sound of his daughter's hungry cries cut him to his very core. Having an energy blade twisted in his sparkchamber could not have been more painful than that. Several times, despite his own hunger, he'd slipped a portion of his own ration to Dynamite, knowing it still wouldn't be enough to completely ease the hunger pains in his daughter's fuel tank. She was so young. Not even a full stellar cycle. And still so very small.

Stahlhand's spark twisted with helplessness. How much longer could this energon shortage go on before his family joined the starving masses of Predacons already spread out across the planet? How much longer could they survive with so little before they joined the heaps of gun-metal gray corpses piled on street corners or left to molder where they lay because there was no one with enough energy anymore to drag their shriveled frames to the recycling center?

The door to his family's living unit finally came into view at the end of the hallway. Stahlhand forced his shoulders back and his head higher in a display of strength he didn't actually feel. If it wasn't for Tripwire and Dynamite he wouldn't have tried so hard to maintain a strong front. But they depended on him for sustenance and reassurance that he was still able to provide for them. For his sparkmate and daughter, he had to remain strong.

"Tripwire?" Stahlhand called as he entered the domicile.

"Here."

Stahlhand followed his sparkmate's voice into the main living area - a narrow room with spartan furnishings. The female espionage expert stood near the only window of their living quarters, staring out over the dirty city beyond. She turned towards him as he entered. Her optics immediately darted to Stahlhand's hands. Despite her best efforts to hide it, Stahlhand saw the disappointment and naked hunger in her optics at the realization that they were empty and held no cubes of precious energon. The dying sunlight seeping in through the window behind her somehow made the sunken contours of Tripwire's facial plates even more pronounced, the loose fit of her armor even more noticeable. Since the start of the energon shortage Tripwire had lost an alarming amount of protomass as her body degraded itself as a source of fuel the same way his own body had begun to devour itself.

The helplessness in Stahlhand's chest swelled. He felt his mask of stoicism involuntarily slip a little bit around the edges.

"The energon shipment was delayed," he explained in a hollow, weary voice. "The general says it should arrive within the next solar cycle or two."

"But what will we do until then?" Tripwire demanded. "We don't have any energon left. This is now the fifth time our rations have been delayed. What are they doing at Central Command? How do they expect their soldiers to fight and feed their families when they do not send enough energon to even survive?"

"I know. But there is nothing I can do to speed the shipments up."

Tripwire gave an angry growl, her dentals bared in agitation. "I can only assume that those higher in the chain of command who _could_ do something about the shipments like General Sytran or High Commander Bombshell are not suffering the same shortages we are, and thus feel less of an urgency about the matter. I bet they are not in want of any energon. They make sure they have enough energon to keep their fuel tanks full, and only _then_ worry about supplying their troops! To the Pit with us if we must slowly starve while they luxuriate in their towers and eat energon candies!" The bitter anger in Tripwire's voice was rattling. The former securities specialist rarely let her emotions get the better of her like that. Across their sparkbond, Stahlhand felt the despair and growing panic stewing inside his sparkmate.

"Tripwire," Stahlhand murmured, struggling to keep a calm facade. "There's nothing we can do but wait. The shipment will come. But we must be patience."

Ignoring his platitudes, Tripwire took a step closer to Stahlhand and speared him with a desperate look. "I have heard rumors of low-grade energon available on the black market. But it is expensive. Two hundred credits for one cube. It is not of any notable quality, but if we bought a supply it could sustain us until this energon shortage ends."

"We can't afford that kind of price. Not on my pay grade. The military subsidizes a large part of my pay with guaranteed energon rations, and we have no savings at our disposal. We would be destitute within weeks if we bought energon at that price."

Tripwire shook her head, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "We cannot afford such a cost on your military pay. But I have also heard on the wind that there might be a position opening on one of the factory lines in the manufacturing district. It is hard grunt labor but the pay would buy us enough energon to survive. I have already put in word that I am interested in taking it."

The battle tank wearily shook his head. "They will never hire a femme. You remember how hard it was for you to find even freelance work after you were forced to retire from the military. They do not believe femmes are capable of performing such physical labor."

"Then what are we to do?" Tripwire snapped. "We have to think of something! We can't keep going on like this. We'll starve to death by the end of this deca-cycle if we do not find some other source of energon. The military has already proven how untrustworthy it is providing us with their 'guaranteed energon rations.'"

"We must be patient," Stahlhand said. "We have survived hardships like this before. We will survive them again."

"And what about Dynamite?" Tripwire snarled. "She is but a sparkling. She is constantly hungry and I have nothing to give her. She is too young and fragile "to be patient" anymore. She hasn't been online long enough to have survived hardships like this before. She is already so weak she barely has enough strength anymore to cry for fuel. She will not survive this energon shortage if we don't do something. And soon!" Tripwire moved closer to Stahlhand until she was standing directly in front of him, desperately staring up into his optics. "I cannot stand to see Dynamite suffer like this anymore. I cannot bear to watch my daughter slowly starve to death in front of me. She cries for fuel and the most I can do is try to soothe her until she finally falls back into recharge from sheer lack of energy." Tripwire's voice became strained. "I do not want to lose our daughter, Stahlhand. I could not bear it if she was taken away from me now."

Stahlhand froze, his spark clenching at his daughter's name.

_Dynamite…_

That single name was enough to put the entire situation into sharp, simplistic, painful focus. Tripwire was right. Despite deca-cycles of patient waiting, the energon shortage still showed no signs of improving. In fact, all the signs pointed towards the crisis becoming even worse before it got better. Alone, he and Tripwire might have been able to ride out the shortage and survived on the increasingly unpredictable shipments of energon rations from the military. But there was no way Dynamite would survive that long. She was too young. Too small. Too frighteningly weak. And all because Stahlhand could not provide her with the basic sustenance her tiny body needed. What kind of father was he if his only answer to his daughter's hunger was to be patient and wait?

"Where is she?" he demanded. He had to find Dynamite. He had to hold her in his arms and reassure himself he wasn't yet too late. The desperateness of his need to hold her and feel the reassuring pulse of her thumb-sized spark against his own was almost crippling.

"On the berth." Tripwire motioned with her chin towards the door on the other side of the room. "I finally got her to fall back into recharge about a mega-cycle ago."

Without a reply, Stahlhand covered the distance separating him from their apartment's sleeping quarters in three long strides. Inside the dark room on the berth in a makeshift nest of thermal sheets Dynamite lay on her side, her body curled against itself as if she were trying to conserve heat. The battle tank strode up to the berth and leaned down over the side. He studied his daughter for a long moment of hesitant silence - counting the seconds in between each new intake she took - before carefully reaching into the pile of thermal sheets and extricating his daughter from them. The tiny blue femme warbled weakly in her sleep but almost instantly fell silent again. Stahlhand wondered if it was because she no longer had the energy to fully wake up and cry for fuel. Her body instinctively curled against the warmth of her father's chest as he settled her in his arms. Her head fit perfectly into the dip between Stahlhand's chest plate and neck cables. The battle-toughened mech gently cradled the back of her head in the palm of one massive hand and hugged her closer to him with the other. Only with Dynamite did this softer side of him ever come out.

_So small_, Stahlhand thought with a pang of almost physical pain. Dynamite was so small. She'd barely gained any mass since her birth. The energon shortage had seen to that. He could barely feel her spark-pulse through his armor anymore it was so weak. He now knew without a shadow of a doubt that what Tripwire had said was correct: Dynamite would not survive this energon crisis if something drastic wasn't done soon.

Stahlhand knew many of the other mechs he served with would have long ago declared a daughter nothing but a financial drain and immediately disposed of her or just let her starve to death. He, however, could never do that. Not to his daughter. Not to Dynamite. It was because of her that he had reevaluated their race's view on female children and their place in Predacon society. He no longer cared what others thought of him for deciding to keep Dynamite instead of discarding her. She was his daughter. His child. _His!_ He had made a vow to her on the day of her birth that he would do everything in his power to protect her. And he intended to keep that vow.

Holding Dynamite close, Stahlhand went back out to the main living area of the domicile. Tripwire was once again near the window. Outside night had fallen and blanketed the city in starlit darkness. Tripwire's dark red optics were empty from hunger and defeat as she stared out through the dirt-smeared glass. She listlessly looked up at Stahlhand as he strode up to stand next to her at the window.

"You will never get that job at the factory," Stahlhand said. He stared past his reflection in the glass towards the bright-lit downtown area of the city half a dozen klicks away. Dynamite was limp in his arms. She didn't even warble in her sleep as he rearranged her tiny body into a more comfortable position against his chest.

"I assumed as much even when I expressed interest in it," Tripwire emptily murmured. "What company would hire a femme when there are dozens of unemployed, hungry mechs to chose from? But… I had to at least _try_."

"You do not need to explain yourself, Tripwire," Stahlhand said. He focused on the curled blue form of his daughter reflected in the glass. "I understand perfectly what you were trying to do. But it was ultimately unnecessary because I intend to take that position myself."

Tripwire startled, staring at Stahlhand in open shock. "But… your position in the army…"

"I can earn the same salary in the civilian sector as I do in the military, if not more. As you said, we cannot continue on like this. We can no longer afford to rely on the army for fuel. I will take that factory job. It is the only thing I can do to assure that we survive this."

"But if you quit you will never be able to reenlist. Your military career will be over."

Stahlhand knew he would miss the army. He would miss the excitement, the thrill of battle, the regimented structure of daily life, his men's respect and the privileges of his rank. It was all he had ever known. But no amount of nostalgia or personal honor could make him ignore the worsening state of his family. His sparkmate and daughter were more important to him than anything the military could offer. For his daughter's sake, he had to leave and try his chances somewhere else. Dynamite's life depended on it.

"I will hand in my letter of resignation tomorrow, then go speak to the factory's foremech. My severance pay from the army should be enough to buy us a few week's worth of energon from the black market."

Tripwire numbly nodded, still stunned by her sparkmate's sacrifice. "I will go speak with a mech I know tomorrow who has connections to those with energon supplies. He will get us a few days' supply to start with."

Stahlhand nodded. With Tripwire's acceptance, his decision was made final. There was no turning back now. In his arms, Dynamite warbled softly in her sleep. She shifted, nuzzling her face deeper into his throat cables. Stahlhand held her close, willing her not to wake to the hunger pains that constantly plagued her every waking moment. Hopefully, by this time tomorrow he could make his daughter's hunger pains nothing more than a memory.

_For you, child, _he silently whispered to the sleeping sparkling, _for you I would give up everything I possess and everything I am. For you I would do anything and everything…_

Happy early Father's Day. Give your daddy a big hug for everything he's ever done for you.

Signing out  
>-LAXgirl<p>

Thoughts? Comments? Questions?

Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Adolescence**

Stahlhand knew something wrong the nano-klick he stepped through the door of his domicile. The air inside was thick with tension. The silence unnerving.

"Tripwire?" he called.

"Here!" his sparkmate barked from deeper inside the apartment.

Stahlhand resisted the urge to sigh. He could tell by her voice that Tripwire was upset, and that never boded well. If there was one thing he'd learned over the stellar cycles in a family unit full of femmes was the art of judging the severity of a situation by the tone of their vocal processors. Stahlhand went to the apartment's main living area. His sparkmate stood near the window, her arms angrily crossed over her chest. His daughter, Dynamite, sat on the lounge, sullenly glaring back at her mother.

"What happened?" Stahlhand wearily asked.

"Ask your daughter," Tripwire spat.

"Dynamite?"

The femme-child turned to Stahlhand and speared him with a frustrated look. "It's not my fault! Those stupid mechlings had it coming! They said I couldn't play War with them because I was a femme. One tried to push me, so I fought back!"

Stahlhand did sigh this time. "Fighting? Again?"

"This is the third time in last five deca-cycles," Tripwire growled. "I was contacted by the education center in the middle of a job - which took me forever to get if you remember! - and had to go collect her. The administrator says if it happens again they're going to expel her."

"Everyone's just upset because I beat those mechlings without any help," Dynamite defiantly protested. "They couldn't beat a scraplet they fought so badly."

Tripwire growled between gritted dentals. "It was not your place to antagonize them. You shouldn't have even been trying to play War in the first place."

"Why?" Dynamite demanded, her facial plates pinched together with indignation.

"War is a mechling's game. It's not for femmes."

"But that's not fair!" Dynamite wailed. "I like playing War. Why do mechlings have all the fun?"

Tripwire looked ready to launch into an angry lecture. Stahlhand could tell by the irritated narrowing of her optics.

"Tripwire, I'll take care of this," he calmly intervened.

Tripwire turned her glare on Stahlhand. "Fine. Maybe you can talk some sense of propriety into her. Primus knows I've already done everything I can!" Then turning her back on the two, the espionage expert stormed out of the living area into the next room. Stahlhand heard the crash of Tripwire taking her frustration out on some helpless inanimate object.

Sighing, Stahlhand turned his attention back to his daughter. Dynamite's body language had become more relaxed in the wake of her mother's departure. She stared at him with questioning optics as Stahlhand walked over the lounge and tiredly dropped down onto it beside the miniature femme. He took a moment to let his tension cables relax and his gears resettle before finally speaking.

"How many mechlings did you beat?"

"Four," Dynamite muttered.

"Impressive," Stahlhand nodded. He couldn't deny the surge of pride that filled his spark at the count. Schooling his expression, he studied his daughter out of the corner of his optic. Only ten stellar cycles old and already Dynamite displayed a fiery personality that no one - not administrators, other younglings at the education center, or her own maternal unit - could quell. It was no surprise that she and Tripwire continually clashed like this. They shared the same hard-headed stubbornness.

"Father, why can't I play War?" Dynamite interrupted Stahlhand's musing. "I'm always the best soldier on the team."

"I'm sure you are," Stahlhand agreed. "But you cannot keep getting into fights like this. It is upsetting your mother and I grow weary of coming home and finding out you've gotten into trouble again."

"But _why?_"

Stahlhand hesitated. How could he explain the dynamics of their society to Dynamite so that she could understand? How could he make her understand the restrictions and prejudices against her gender? How could he explain to her the idea that Predacon society dictated that she live and be treated as a second-class citizen to her male counterparts? It didn't seem right to have to explain such complicated things to a youngling who hadn't even had her third upgrade.

If only Dynamite had come online as a mech, Stahlhand wistfully thought. Then everything would be simpler. No one ever made a fuss when two mechlings scuffled at the education center. In Predacon society, such fights were expected and even encouraged. But for a femme to do so? It was tantamount to indecency.

"It's just not what most bots consider proper, Dynamite," Stahlhand lamely balked. "Femmes aren't suppose to like games like War."

Dynamite made a disgusted face. "But I do. It's like what you used to do for real when you were in the army."

"War is nothing like being the army. It's only a game. Only the fiercest warriors can fight for our faction. Only the strongest."

"Then I want to be a warrior like you were," Dynamite said. She stared up at Stahlhand with determined optics. "I want to join the army and fight just like you used to."

Stahlhand sighed, unexplainably saddened by his daughter's naïve declaration. In a perfect world Dynamite would be free to fight and become a warrior just like she wanted. But their world was not perfect. Far from it. Theirs was a world steeped with prejudice and injustice. As much as he would have loved to assure his small daughter that she could, in fact, achieve such a dream he knew such encouragement would ultimately only lead Dynamite to heartache and disappointment. Their world was not ready for such strong females yet.

Yet Stahlhand couldn't bring himself to admit such harsh realities to his daughter. He loved Dynamite too much to burden her with so many cruel facts of life at such an early age. To him she was still his little sparkling - a creature to protect and coddle like a treasure.

"If you want to become a warrior than you must learn to control your emotions in the face of conflict," Stahlhand said. "True warriors know when to attack and when to wait for the opportune moment to strike. A true warrior knows when to use their strength and when to retreat. And your fight at the center today was an example of a time when restraint would have been the best course of action."

Dynamite's expression fell, her facial plates filling with distress. "But I only wanted to prove I was just as strong as them!"

Stahlhand nodded. "I know. But a true warrior does not need to prove himself through brute strength alone. A true warrior proves himself through his demeanor and bearing in all situations."

The little femme leaned back on the lounge beside him, her body language dejected. Stahlhand felt his spark soften at the sight of his daughter's self-chastised disappointment.

"If you wish, I will train you in the ways of the warrior so that you can learn to control your emotions on the playground."

Dynamite's head shot up and stared at him in naked excitement. "You will?"

"Yes," Stahlhand nodded. Again, his pride swelled at the sight of his daughter's enthusiasm. "But you must not tell your mother," he cautioned. "She would probably not take kindly to the idea of me training you in the martial arts."

Dynamite eagerly shook her head. "I won't tell." Scooting closer to her father, she looked deep into his optics as though swearing a promise. "I'll become the best warrior there is. You'll see, father. I'll be the best warrior Cybertron has ever seen."

"Perhaps you will," Stahlhand rumbled indulgently.

Although an ample amount of doubt still shadowed his thoughts, Stahlhand couldn't help but wonder if maybe his Dynamite wouldn't yet prove herself to be such a warrior. Perhaps not as a warrior in the Predacon army, but one that fought for the betterment of their race in a different way, a different capacity - the very first one of her kind.

_Yes… Perhaps you just might…_

To be concluded

Only one more part left. It won't be happy.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: I'm not sure if anyone's even reading this anymore, but I had a blast writing this mini-fic even if only for my own enjoyment. This last chapter especially. It ties off what has felt like a loose end for feminine Dinobot's character that's been bugging me for the longest time now. I've also come to absolutely love Stahlhand. He's like my baby. My big brutish I-could-rip-your-head-off-if-you-so-much-as-look-at-my-daughter-wrong baby…

* * *

><p>"Father, I wish to enlist in the army."<p>

Stahlhand stared at his daughter, his canister of black market high-grade forgotten. It had been a long day at the factory and he'd been hoping for the opportunity to relax that evening.

Apparently, that was not to be so.

"What?"

Dynamite withdrew a data pad from a sub-space compartment on her hip and set it on the table between her and Stahlhand. "I went and spoke to a recruiting officer this morning. I can enlist in the infantry - it has the largest corps of female soldiers. A convoy of new recruits is scheduled to depart tomorrow morning for training. I wish to leave with them. I only need you to imprint your electronic signature on this data pad so I can complete the registration process."

Stahlhand vented a heavy cycle of air. He'd been expecting this day for years - ever since Dynamite was upgraded with her first full set of armor. He'd always known his headstrong daughter would one day take it upon herself to go over his head to try and prove herself in the world. "Dynamite, we've discussed this countless times. I do not want you to join the military."

Dynamite's facial plates - so similar to his own - contorted into an irritated scowl. "Why?"

"I have explained my reasons to you before. You do not belong in the army. The military is no place for females. There are other things you can do besides being a nameless foot soldier."

"Like what?" Dynamite demanded. Stahlhand could hear the defiant anger brewing in her voice.

"You work in the shipping yards-"

"As nothing more than a lowly errand runner," Dynamite spat.

"-as a shipping assistant," Stahlhand calmly ignored his daughter's interruption. "It is a good enough job until you find a sparkmate and settle down."

Dynamite's face contorted with disgust. "I have no intention of ever taking a sparkmate. I want to have a more meaningful life than becoming some mech's domesticated servant."

Stahlhand's calm was beginning to fray. How many times had he had this discussion with Dynamite already? How many times had he tried to make her accept the bitter truth? As much as he wished it could be otherwise and had ignored it as much as he could himself, over the years he'd come to reluctantly accept the realities of his daughter's prospects. Their society was not meant to accommodate the desires and ambitions of a femme like his daughter.

"Such a future is the best a femme can hope for in our world, Dynamite. To become bonded and continue the propagation of your sparkmate's line is the most fulfilling future you can hope for."

"But I do not want that life!" Dynamite spat. "That is why I want to join the army. At least there I would have some measure of respect, some sense of accomplishment. I could go to different places and actually put my warrior skills to use."

Stahlhand wearily shook his head. Whatever his daughter's ideas of the military were, they were fantasies. Females could fight and die alongside their male counterparts in service to their faction but they still weren't afforded the same rights and privileges as mechs. They were the lowest of the low in the army's hierarchy and usually the first ones sent onto dangerous battlefields in order to test the enemy's offensive capabilities - regardless of potential casualties. In the Predacon military femmes were rarely given respect, treated as glorified drones and pleasure slaves and - most disturbing of all to Stahlhand - seen as completely _expendable_. He still remembered the jokes and off-colored stories other mechs in his unit used to tell when he was still in the service. There was no way he was going to let his daughter become the butt of some low-RAMed foot soldier's joke.

"No, Dynamite. I will not give my permission for you to join. My decision is made."

Dynamite growled, her hands tightening around the edges of the table. "I will not accept that, father."

"You _will_ accept it because it is my final word on the matter," Stahlhand barked, his patience finally snapping. His voice rose to match Dynamite's. "You forget your place. I am the mech of this family - its head. I make the decisions. And I say this discussion is _over_. You are not going to join the army!"

"Mother served in the army. Why can't I?"

"Because your mother's sire had three other children to care for - all of them male - and he could not afford to keep your mother anymore. He wanted her out of the household to lessen the burden on the rest of the family unit. Your mother enlisted out of familial duty and lack of any other options. She never would have done so if she'd had any other choice. You, on the other hand, are influenced by none of those things. There is no good reason for you to sign your life away to the military."

"I am trying to follow in your footsteps, father! I am trying to do what you once loved to do. What gave you pride and fulfillment. All I want is the chance to prove myself. But I need your permission to do so!" Angrily, Dynamite shoved the data pad across the tabletop closer to Stahlhand. At the bottom of its screen blinked an empty square where all Stahlhand had to do was pressed his thumb against to give his electronic consent.

"No," Stahlhand stubbornly said. He pushed the data pad back across the table toward Dynamite. "I will not give my consent for my daughter to become cannon fodder."

"I will not become cannon fodder, father. You trained me yourself in martial arts and the warrior way. I can protect myself on the battlefield."

"I trained you in order to focus your energy! To help curb your recklessness! Not to give you unrealistic goals!" Heaving a weary sigh, the battle tank shook his helm "Obviously I have failed in that. Perhaps it would have been better if I had never trained you in the first place…"

"So that I could become a bonded slave and breeding vessel instead?" Dynamite tightly growled. "Something little better than an obedient drone?"

"Yes!" Stahlhand roared in frustration, all his previous calm gone. "I hate it too, but it is the only option left to you! We can no longer ignore facts. You are a femme. Your choices are pitifully few. We must face reality. We can no longer pretend it can be otherwise. You will never be a general, a commander, or great leader of any kind. You will never find glory on the battlefield. Your future was set the moment you came online. And no amount of yearning on your or my part will ever change that."

Dynamite's optic burned with fire, her expression a livid contortion of facial plates. With a violent snarl she surged to her pedes, knocking her chair over behind her. "I will _NOT_ accept that, father! I will not submit to such a fate without a fight! I am trying to regain the family honor that _you_ threw away when you left the military. Why are you so determined to keep us mired in shame?"

Stahlhand followed his daughter's example and sprang to his own feet, his hands balled into fists. Stahlhand and Dynamite glared at each other across the table. "I left the military to be able to provide for you and your mother," he snarled through gritted teeth. "To keep you alive. Primus! What sins did I commit to be cursed with such a disrespectful, willful daughter? It would have been better if I just discarded you as a sparkling. Perhaps then I wouldn't have had to suffer such hardship through the years or face such disrespect and scrutiny now!"

Dynamite froze, her facial plates betraying a flash of hurt. Silence hung heavy between them. "Is that what I am to you, father?" she finally said, her voice a subdued whisper. "A burden?"

Stahlhand's anger quickly faded with the realization of what he'd said. "Dynamite-"

"If I am such a burden to you then I will sever my ties with your household to help ease the strain. I see now that I can never bring honor to you the way a proper Predacon femme should. I am sorry, father, but I cannot quietly submit to the kind of life you want for me. I just cannot do it. Not for you or our family's honor."

Turning towards the door, Dynamite stiffly began to walk away.

"Dynamite!" Stahlhand yelled. "Come back!" But his daughter would not turn around and face him. She continued towards the door with her head held defiantly high. Stahlhand helplessly trailed after her. Every diode in his body screamed at him to grab her and make her stop. To tell her he hadn't meant what he'd said - that he'd just become caught up in the moment and let his frustration get the better of him. That he was sorry.

But Stahlhand had been taught long ago that to admit such things was a sign of weakness. And Stahlhand was nothing if not strong. His pride would not allow him to apologize or admit he was wrong.

"Dynamite, don't!"

Dynamite deactivated the door locks without even a backwards glace, as if she hadn't even heard her father's command. The door slid open with a hiss.

On the other side of the door - having just returned from a small errand - Tripwire stood in the hallway with her hand hovering over the apartment's outer door lock. She stared at her sparkmate and daughter, sensing the tension between them.

"What's going on?" she demanded. "What happened?"

Dynamite did not answer and shoved past her mother into the hall.

"Dynamite!" Stahlhand yelled, growing desperate. "If you leave like this I will never welcome you back into this domicile! You will be forever outcast!"

Dynamite paused in the hallway and slowly turned back towards her creators. A surge of relief filled Stahlhand's spark. Finally. Dynamite had seen reason and everything could go back to the way it was before she brought that accursed consent form to him.

Dynamite turned to Tripwire with an expression that could have only been described as sad. "Farewell, mother," she murmured. Then with nothing more than one last sorrowful glance at Stahlhand, she turned and walked away.

"Dynamite!" Stahlhand yelled after her. But his daughter turned a corner in the hallway and was gone.

Tripwire turned to her sparkmate. "What in the nine Pit Fires was that about?"

Stahlhand shook his head. "The same old thing, except this time Dynamite actually brought a data pad for me to sign."

Tripwire groaned through her vents. "Oh Stahlhand…"

The battle tank shook his head. "She'll be back. She just needs some time to let her circuits cool off."

But Dynamite did not come back. Stahlhand did not worry the first few days. He knew his daughter's pride ran deep and that it would be awhile before Dynamite admitted defeat and asked to return. After a deca-cycle of silence, though, he began to grow concerned. After two deca-cycles Tripwire caved and tried to contract their daughter at her domicile near the shipping yards. There was no answer. After another deca-cycle Stahlhand finally had had enough of his daughter's stubbornness, and with Tripwire went to their daughter's apartment complex to confront her. There they discovered that Dynamite had vacated her domicile weeks ago. The superintendent didn't know where she'd gone.

Panicked, Stahlhand sent word to coworkers, former comrades in the army, and members of his and Tripwire's extended family units to keep a lookout for her. He even contacted a private investigator to hunt down his missing daughter. But it was all for not. No one could find Dynamite. It was like she'd just disappeared.

It was sometime several months after Dynamite's disappearance that Stahlhand, in a fit of helpless despair, imprinted his electronic signature onto the data pad Dynamite had brought him. It became his talisman. As if that signed consent form would somehow magically make his daughter come back to him.

Deca-cycles turned into months. Months into years. Years into decades until Stahlhand and Tripwire finally gave up hope of their daughter ever returning. Despair and a thousand unanswerable questions constantly haunted him. Was Dynamite still alive? Dead? Living in some distant city? On a different planet or perhaps some space colony? Was she well? Was she in need of help? Was she in danger? Did she ever intend to come back home?

There was no way to know for sure.

As time went on Dynamite's name became taboo. Like the proverbial space frigate in the room, Stahlhand and Tripwire never uttered her name out loud because of the pain it caused. Memories of their daughter formed an invisible wall between Stahlhand and Tripwire that had never existed before. Stahlhand could feel through their bond the resentful blame Tripwire felt towards him for their daughter's disappearance. Stahlhand wished he could do something to ease his sparkmate's bitterness, but he felt his guilt too heavily to try to mitigate his blame.

Stahlhand tried to move on past the heartache, but something always felt missing. Like someone had reached into his chest and ripped out a section of his spark in the shape of his daughter. Too proud to let himself surrender to depression, the former Predacon commander forced a stoic expression onto his face and ordered himself to soldier on. But the absence of his daughter always hovered there just on the edge of his thoughts.

Then, one night almost forty years after his daughter had stormed out of her parent's domicile and disappeared, Stahlhand was sitting on the lounge in the living area of his apartment, watching the latest new feeds of the day. Apparently, a Maximal crew of explorers had recently returned to Cybertron after stopping a rogue Predacon general who'd stolen a precious artifact from the Maximal High Council's Archives. Details were still sketchy, but the Tri-Predacus Council had issued a statement commending the Maximal crew on their actions against the rogue general - a mech named _Megatron_ of all things - whose agenda would have ultimately caused untold damage to the Predacons' government and power structure.

_Impudent, power-hungry megalomaniac,_ Stahlhand snorted. No matter how many stellar cycles passed, the hubris of some mechs never ceased to amaze him. To adopt the name of the former Decepticon leader had to be the biggest show of foolhardy pride he'd ever seen. The original Megatron had been one of the biggest failures in all of Cybertronian history - an embarrassing black mark on Predacon and Decepticon pride.

The muffled _ding_ of the apartment's door alarm startled Stahlhand out of his thoughts.

"Tripwire," he called to his sparkmate over the murmur of the tele-consol. "Are you expecting anyone tonight?"

"No," Tripwire called from the other room. "Why?"

"Someone's at the door." Hoisting himself to his pedes, the battle tank went to it. "I'll get it."

With a quick series of numbers punched into the keypad, Stahlhand disengaged the locks.

"What do you want?" Stahlhand demanded as the door slid aside. "It's rather late for-"

All conscious thought left the battle-toughened warrior at the sight of the one standing in the hallway. Like the resurrected ghost of some half-forgotten memory was his daughter, Dynamite.

Her body language tense with nervousness, Dynamite stared up at him with questioning optics as if she wasn't sure what kind of welcome she should be expecting to receive.

For a moment all Stahlhand could do was stare. He wondered if perhaps he hadn't finally gone mad with grief and that what he was seeing wasn't really the figment of a malfunctioning processor. As he stood there, frozen with shock, trying to rearrange his thoughts, he noticed the odd coloring of Dynamite's armor. Dark brown and tan stripes crisscrossed the armored plating on her arms, legs and chest, while bone-like ridges wrapped around her sides, forearms and shins.

It was then that Stahlhand in his stunned daze also noticed out of the corner of his optic a mech barely half Dynamite's size standing just behind her in the hallway. His superstructure was formatted with strange iridescent blue and silver plating the likes of which Stahlhand had never seen before. Beside the mech, half hidden behind his legs, was a third even smaller bot. It took Stahlhand's surprise-stricken processor several nano-klicks to realize it was a young sparkling.

These bots, however, were barely even fleeting thoughts in his processor. All he could focus on was his daughter.

"Dynamite," he numbly murmured. A part of him still feared the specter would dissipate into a cloud of smoke at any moment. That he would lose his daughter - even if only a phantom of his helpless yearning - again.

But then the specter spoke, proving her existence. "Father…"

Happiness and relief so intense it was almost physically painful blossomed through Stahlhand's chest. The confused jumble of feelings crashed against his spark like a tidal wave. Silently, he sent a prayer of thanks to Primus for this unforeseen miracle.

His daughter had finally come back to him.

The end


End file.
